Afghanistan: winning, or just going home?

Marine brass close out year amid steep drawdown, rise in attacks

The commandant and several other Marine Corps generals spent Christmas in southwestern Afghanistan, where a Camp Pendleton force is closing out a year in command of international troops in one of the country’s most violent provinces.

As the administration weighs how many American forces to send home next year among the 66,000 remaining in Afghanistan, a Pentagon report to Congress this month underscored the risks of the steep drawdown of troops from Helmand province.

Marine Corps leaders and Afghan officials, however, are citing progress in the region, a center for the illegal poppy trade where insurgents have been routed from most towns and Afghan troops are patrolling largely on their own.

They also visited a fighter jet squadron from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar deployed in the Persian Gulf, among other stops.

On Christmas Day, Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, and Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, also visited Helmand.

Amos stopped in Marjah, where Marines were involved in fierce combat for much of 2010, and told troops deployed there how proud he was of progress in Helmand province.

“I have been in and out of here for four years,” Amos said, according to Master Sgt. Brenda Varnadore, a Marine journalist. “It’s changing for the better. This battalion has spent a lot of blood in the Marjah area. ... (But) we are going to leave this place under victory.”

Afghan officials in the region are also emphasizing the bright spots as insurgents hit security posts recently taken over by Afghan troops hard.

After Christmas, the Helmand governor’s office announced an intensification of their fight against the poppy trade funding the insurgency. In Lashkar Gah, police captured 64 pounds of heroin and 1,058 pounds of dry poppy, according to Governor Alhaj Mohammad Naem.

Just five pounds of heroin can fetch a street value of more than $1 million.

Also announced was the graduation of 105 Afghan police trainees and the defection of six insurgents who reportedly made peace with provincial officials, bringing the total to more than 80.

Helmand Province has been by far the deadliest province for international forces since the war began in 2001. At least 910 NATO troops have been fatally wounded there, most of them American Marines, according to icasualties.org. In 2010 during the peak of the surge of U.S. troops sent into Afghanistan and a doubling of the Marine force in Helmand, 210 were killed in one year.

In neighboring Kandahar province, another stronghold of the insurgency and the birthplace of the Taliban, 507 troops have been killed during the war. No other province in Afghanistan has had 200 or more fatalities.

Maj. Gen. Charles Gurganus and his staff from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton are scheduled to transfer command in March to East Coast Marines. About 6,000 U.S. troops remain in Helmand, down from a high of more than 20,000 last year.